Founding Circle Members

Geoff Baehr is a partner at USVP, and an advisor to the Skolkovo Foundation and Almaz Capital. He also is a technical advisor to numerous companies. Previously, he was Chief Network Officer at Sun Microsystems, responsible for technical and strategic network directors.Geoff holds 13 patents in networking, security and RF engineering. He founded the ATM Forum, and has served on numerous technical and advisory boards for both industry and government. In the 1980’s, he designed large networks for government clients for TRW Information Networks Division. At USVP, Geoff serves on the board of Vivato. When he's not helping entrepreneurs think ‘out of the box,’ he's looking through a box. Geoff practices large format nature photography using the historical wooden view cameras. Geoff also volunteers with the San Mateo County Sheriff's office and works with the Cliff Rescue/Dive/Marine Unit as Head Diver.

Dick Bingham has a distinguished career in finance and is a recognized philanthropist in the San Francisco community. As Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the California Academy of Sciences from January 1996 to July 2007, he led the institution during its key formative years as Founding Chair of the New Academy.He also has served as a Trustee of the Town School, the Urban School and Middlesex School and as a member of the Board of the San Francisco Committee on Jobs.Currently, Dick serves as a Board Member of The Bay School of San Francisco, and a Trustee of the World Affairs Council of Northern California, and the California Pacific Medical Center Foundation. He also is past Honorary Consul of Lithuania. With a 28-year distinguished career in, finance Dick Bingham was a senior executive with Kuhn Loeb and Lehman Brothers and led the divisions of Investment Banking, Corporate Finance, Mergers and Acquisitions as well as served as a member of the Board of both firms.In 1989, he founded the private equity firm, American Industrial Partners, where he currently serves as President and CEO. Dick Bingham attended the University of Geneva, College of European des Sciences Socials et Economique de University de Paris, and graduated from Stanford University and Harvard Business School, and served as an officer in the U.S. Navy.

Esther is Chairman of EDventure Holdings, where she invests and nurtures start-ups primarily in the fields of healthcare and aerospace. As a child, she assumed that she’d be flying in a rocket ship as an adult; as an adult, she realized she had to get directly involved to make that dream possible for herself and others.That led her to invest in Icon Aircraft, Nanoracks, Space Adventures and XCOR Aerospace, and serve on the boards of Airship Ventures and XCOR. From October 2008 to March 2009, she lived in Star City outside Moscow, training as a backup cosmonaut (to Charles Simonyi). From 2005 to 2007, she ran the annual Flight School conference, devoted to startups in air and space. That background, plus a family interest in space (via father Freeman and brother George) make her a natural as a B612 Founder.Esther serves on numerous boards, including: 23andMe, Eventful, Evernote, IBS Group (advisory board), Meetup, NewspaperDirect, Voxiva (the company behind text4baby.org in the US and Russia), WPP Group, and, Yandex, as well as the Eurasia Foundation, Long Now Foundation, Sunlight Foundation, Personal Genome Foundation, Commercial Spaceflight Federation, and StopBadware.org. She also writes a monthly column for project-syndicate.org.

Alan Eustace is a Senior Vice President of Engineering and Knowledge at Google Inc, having joined the company in 2002. Previously, he spent 15 years at Digital/Compaq/HP’s Western Research Laboratory, where he worked on a variety of chip design and architecture projects, including the MicroTitan Floating Point unit, BIPS—the fastest microprocessor of its era. Alan also worked with Amitabh Srivastava on ATOM, a binary code instrumentation system. Alan is actively involved in a number of Google‘s community-related activities, including The Second Harvest Food Bank and Anita Borg Scholarship Fund. He is the author of several publications, and holds numerous patents. Alan earned a bachelor‘s degree, a master‘s degree, and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Central Florida.

Dr. Galitsky is Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Almaz Capital Partners, a Cisco-backed venture capital firm specializing in US-Russian investments. The company successfully invested in Yandex, QIK (acquired by Skype), Parallels, and Vyatta, among others.‘Sasha’ is an internationally recognized technology entrepreneur and inventor who was one of the youngest technical executives in the Soviet space industry, with responsibility for computer information and low orbit data communication systems. In the early ‘90s, Alexander founded and led five successful technology companies with operations in the US, Russia and Western Europe. He pioneered ELVIS+ in WiFi technology development and product development of FireWall and VPN products for the global market with Sun Microsystems. With TrustWorks, he became a "Technology Pioneer" at the Davos World Economic Forum 2000.Dr. Galitsky is recognized as a key influence in the modern Russian IT/Internet industry by major media, including Forbes magazine, and has received numerous high-tech industry awards. In 2010, he was appointed to the Board of the Skolkovo Foundation, the key innovation project of the Russian Federation.

Dane is Vice President for Global Product Management for eBay Marketplaces, bringing more than 15 years experience leading product design and development, innovation in search technology, and management to the world’s largest online marketplace. Working closely with eBay’s business teams, Dane and his worldwide teams aim to surface the best deals, drive increased business conversion and grow customer satisfaction across more than 102 million active users and $68b in gross merchandise volume globally (2011).In December 2010, Dane helped lead eBay’s acquisition of Milo, a local shopping engine, and now manages the integration of Milo’s local commerce solution into the eBay customer experience. Dane joined eBay through the acquisition of Positronic, a software company he co-founded and as CTO, set the roadmap for machine learning and natural language processing platform in the finance sector. Previously, he served as Director of Program Management at Microsoft for the core Live Search product, and GM for the Windows Live Portal & Client team, where he delivered products including Microsoft’s web search experience, Windows Desktop Search and Live.com. Dane joined Microsoft though the acquisition of Jump.com, a company he helped create and oversee product design, technology partnerships, and operations. With a keen interest in space missions, Dane serves as a Trustee of the SETI Institute.

Steven is a tech industry veteran and former Facebook engineer with a longstanding interest in astronomy and spacecraft.

Steve is Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a leading venture capital firm with global affiliates managing $7B.Internationally, DFJ was the main investor in Baidu and Skype. His current board positions include SpaceX, Synthetic Genomics, Tesla Motors, and a new satellitecompany.He was the founding VC investor in Hotmail, NeoPhotonics, Interwoven, and Kana, and led DFJ’s investments in various other companies acquired for $12B. Prior to DFJ, Steve was an R&D Engineer at Hewlett-Packard, a consultant at Bain, and worked in product marketing at Apple and NeXT.At Stanford University, he finished his BSEE in 2.5 years and graduated #1 in his class, before earning MSEE and MBA degrees.

Steve joined USVP in 1985, with a background in information technology, and many years of operating experience with NASA and a number of Silicon Valley start-ups. His primary focus is security and “big data” software.Steve led USVP investments in Accelerated Networks (IPO), Applied Digital Access (IPO), Centerview Software (acquired by Sybase), CipherTrust (acquired by Secure Computing), Elantec (IPO), Guidewire (IPO), Imperva (IPO), MicroLinear (IPO), Occam Networks (Public), Savings.com (acquired by Cox), Sierra Monolithics (acquired by Semtech), Verity (IPO), Vontu (acquired by Symantec) and Xylan (IPO). He also co-led USVP's investments in Check Point Software (IPO), Harmonic Lightwaves (IPO), Epic Design (IPO), NetDynamics (acquired by SUN); New Focus (IPO) and Stratacom (IPO), and managed the firm’s investments in and board seats for Appthority, Blekko, Electric Cloud, Karmasphere, Quixey, ReadyForce, Smartling, Trusteer and Xirrus.Previously, Steve served on the board of the Woodside Priory and was Treasurer of the National Venture Capital Association. He’s currently a Board Member of the World Affairs Council, Stanford GSB Trust and DAPER. Steve Krausz earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from Stanford Business School, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar.

Content

Joining Menlo Ventures in 2011, Shervin is focused on the social web, consumer Internet and mobile systems. He also serves on the board, and works closely with Machine Zone, Uber, Fab, Warby Parker, Shaker, and Mr. Number, and has led Menlo's investment in Tumblr.Shervin also helped launch the Menlo Talent Fund, a new $20m seed fund. Before joining Menlo, Shervin was Chief Application Officer and GM at Mozilla Corporation, after spending most of his career as a serial entrepreneur and angel investor.During his career, he has raised more than $50m for companies which have reached an aggregate of 100 million users: Webs.com (sold to Vistaprint), Social Gaming Network (merged with Mindjolt), and Hyperoffice.In addition, he has angel-invested in more than 40 companies including Klout, Voxer, Aardvark (sold to Google), Blakjet, Dollar Shave Club, Branchout (advisor), Talent House, Gowalla (sold to Facebook), Milo.com (sold to eBay), TaskRabbit, Milk (sold to Google), Rapportive (sold to Linkedin), Likealittle (LAL), Qwiki, Votizen, Yobongo (sold to Mixbook), SpruceMedia, Medialets and SolveMedia. Shervin serves on the advisory board of Comscore.Shervin is one of 10 members of the UN Foundation’s Global Entrepreneurs Council, and serves as an Entrepreneurial Ambassador on several State Department delegations as well as at the President’s Summit on Entrepreneurship. He was chosen by the US Government as an Outstanding American by Choice - one of only 100 naturalized Americans to be chosen since the beginning of the award. Giving back is very important to Shervin and is the reason he dedicates time to traveling abroad to Africa to volunteer with Invisible Children and charity:water. Shervin is a graduate of the University of California (BA, Interdisciplinary Studies Field Major), a published researcher in JAMA and Neuroscience Letters and the author of several US patents.

Edwin Sahakian is the CEO of Ardwin Freight and a Founding Astronaut of Virgin Galactic. He is also a flight instructor and Professor of Aerodynamics.

Yishan is CEO of Reddit, a cofounder of Mountain View’s Sunfire Offices, and an advisor at Quora, an online knowledge market. He was a Senior Engineering Manager at Paypal, and Director of Engineering at Facebook, in charge of developing much of the patentable technology including notably crowd translation. Since April 2011, Yishan Wong has been a contributing editor at Forbes magazine.